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DC: The majority rules allows certain readings to appear much later 600+ years in some cases after the work was written. Therefore should the majority rule if the reading has no early MSS to atest to it?

Given (a) that the early pre-4th century papyri now confirm the existence of many "majority" readings that previously had *no* attestation prior to the 4th century; (b) that some of those papyrus supported "late Byzantine" readings are now accepted as original (e.g. by Zuntz and others), despite their prior lack of pre-fourth century attestation; (c) and that people like Colwell, Kilpatrick, and Elliott have consistently maintained that virtually *every* sensible variant reading had its origin during the second century -- it thus seems quite unreasonable to presume that a "majority" reading found among extant MSS today cannot be original merely because some ancient papyrus to confirm such has not yet been found; nor to presume either that such a reading never existed in the early period; nor to presume that such a reading could not be considered as possibly original.

Prior to the discovery of p75 in 1955, textual scholars were doubting whether the Alexandrian texttype actually existed during the pre-4th century era, and some (like Kenyon and Streeter in the 1940s) were ready to abandon that notion --until p75 changed everything.

If one is a *true* reasoned or rigorous eclectic, *all* readings must be examined for possible originality, and internal criteria in this regard become of primary importance, even more so than the external existence of various MSS, simply for the reasons mentioned above.